My Ovarimony

The obsession with eliminating certain "gender-biased" words isn't only not beneficial, but is also ruining the definition of feminism in today's society.

If I were to stand in front of one of my classrooms in today's society, and announce, "I am a feminist," I guarantee that half of the classroom would groan. There's no wonder why they would; a feminist today is seen as the carbon copy of Ms. Maggio in The Word Police. Forget about sex trafficking and the lack of education for women in third world countries, we need to change the word "mankind" to "allkind!" We women do not want to be called "gorgeous," that's sexist... we're more than our appearance. Really? "Lazy Susan?" Way to imply that all women are lazy... now let's change the Declaration to "all people are created equal."

That's not feminism. I've never even met any women that have ever framed their beliefs as a feminist like that. Yet, when once having a conversation with my close friends about gender-related issues, they immediately said, "oh god... you're not one of those people, right?" And another time, when one of my friends refused to call herself a feminist. She assured me she believed our society still needed to progress in terms of gender equality, and wanted change, yet was scared away by the label. The girls that I'm friends with today, that see through the idiocy of believing "feminist = bad," simply believe in equality.

It's ridiculous that the definition of feminism has gotten so distorted, where its only meaning today is essentially that you're crazy. Only possessing a drive to twist words so that we forget gender has ever even existed won't solve sexism. Yet, somehow, this set of ideals has become imbedded into the definition of a feminist for far too much of America.

Let's instead focus on making the world a less dangerous environment for women, whether if its in America with sexual assault, or far overseas with child brides. The 'fem' in feminist does not mean that women are craving dominance--even a word demonstrating equality will have a "gender-bias" to some. No true feminist craves becoming a "womyn"--society needs to stop generalizing this idea to feminism in order to continue making a positive change.

Comments

  1. Lauren MonaghanApril 21, 2019 at 11:37 AM

    Wow Abby this blog is amazing (and I completely agree with your ideas)! You express your ideas in such a concise manner. I love how you displayed the two different feminist "definitions" and explained reasoning for your own perspective. -Lauren Monaghan

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